BELARUS

Two months after a regular Sunday morning service of the New Life Church in Minsk was raided by police, a court fined the church’s administrator Vasily Yurevich the equivalent of 160 times the minimum monthly wage for organizing what the court called an “illegal” service. Yurevich told Forum 18 News Service that Judge Natalya Kuznetsova ignored church members’ insistence that he had not organized the service, while the court decision maintained that the judge “believes offender Yurevich is trying to evade responsibility for what has been committed.” This is Yurevich’s second massive fine and he fears further fines in the wake of a recent police raid of a church service. (Forum 18 News)